


We Are the Soul of the Universe

by found_the_good_things



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender, We Are The Tigers - Allen
Genre: Gen, give me chaotic space aunt farrah, i have no idea if this is gonna go past the first episode or not but if it does it'll be kateva, i say graphic depictions of violence but there's no blood or anything, it follows the exact plot, it's just voltron except it's the watt kids and they say fuck a lot, just lots of epic space battles, mostly - Freeform, yes i know this could easily be checkate but i prefer kateva, you don't have to know anything about voltron to read it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-13
Updated: 2020-12-20
Packaged: 2021-03-11 02:35:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 17,879
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28037793
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/found_the_good_things/pseuds/found_the_good_things
Summary: Chess Belmont was supposed to be a cargo pilot, but now she's determined to turn herself into the best fighter pilot to ever graduate from the Galaxy Garrison.Reese Roberts prefers fixing things, but she's always wondered what it would be like to be in the pilot's chair.Kate Dalton was on track to go down in history as a legendary fighter pilot, but after her mentor goes missing, she flunks out with a discipline problem and moves to a shack in the desert.Eva Sanchez is determined to find her mom and sister, even if she has to go undercover as someone completely different to get into the Garrison.Cairo Adekoya has been missing for a year, presumed dead, but actually captured by a people no one on Earth has ever heard of.~A Voltron AU!!!
Relationships: Annleigh & Farrah (We Are The Tigers), Cairo & Kate (We Are The Tigers), Chess & Kate (We Are The Tigers), Chess & Reese & Eva Sanchez (We Are The Tigers), Chess & Reese (We Are The Tigers), Kate/Eva Sanchez (We Are The Tigers)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 17





	1. The Rise of Voltron - Part 1

Sometimes people don’t even know that Pluto has moons.

Cairo, standing on a sheet of ice and staring across the nearly endless expanse of snow on Kerberos, finds that ironic.

About ten feet away from her, Isabella Sanchez is supervising her daughter, Elena, pulling an ice core out of the drill. “Careful, Ellie, the ice is delicate,” she warns.

“I know, Mom.” The core is now halfway out of the drill. Elena looks over at Cairo. “Hey, isn’t this exciting, Cairo?”

Cairo grins at her. “You guys get a bit more excited about ice samples than I do, you know.”

“This is _history in the making_.” Isabella’s eyes are wide and excited. “First of all, we traveled farther than any human ever has before. And this ice might hold microscopic clues about life outside of Earth.”

“Those clues might make us the first people to meet aliens!” Elena says dreamily.

“I think my life’s worth would be complete then,” Isabella says.

Cairo stumbles as the ground begins to shake under her feet.

“Is that seismic activity?” Isabella asks, getting to her feet.

“Let’s get back to the ship,” Cairo says sharply. But then a shadow washes over the three of them, and as they look up, Cairo’s stomach twists.

A huge purple ship hovers in the space above them. It’s like nothing Cairo has ever seen before - definitely not from Earth.

“Holy shit,” Elena breathes.

“Run,” Cairo says, her tone growing more urgent. “Come on, _run_!”

But then, like something out of a sci-fi movie, a purple beam of light surrounds the three astronauts and lifts them into the air.

~

_“Emperor Zarkon. We were scouting System X-9-Y as ordered when we found these primitive scientists. I don’t think they know anything useful.”_

_“Take them back to the main fleet for interrogation. The druids will find out what they know.”_

_“Please! Our planet is peaceful, we mean you no harm! We- we’re unarmed!”_

~

_“Look, they brought in another one.”_

_“Who is it?”_

_“Over there, it’s another one.”_

_“Huh?”_

~

A year later, three cadets are flying a rescue mission to Kerberos.

“Galaxy Garrison flight log 5-11-14,” Chess says easily, her hands never leaving the controls. “Begin descent to Kerberos for rescue mission.”

“Um, Chess? Can you try to keep this thing straight?” Reese asks nervously.

“Dude, relax, I’m just getting a feel for the ship. It’s not like I did… _this_!” Chess flies the ship in one sharp angle, and then another, and Reese gags.

“Look, unless you wanna wipe beef stroganoff out of a delicate ship, you’re gonna _knock that off_!” she scolds.

“Guys, we’re picking up a signal!” Evan interrupts from across the ship.

“Alright, team, look alive.” Chess straightens up, tightening her grip on the ship’s controls. “Evan, track coordinates.”

“Copy.”

“Stop it, Chess, please!” Reese begs, gripping her chair.

Chess glances at the sudden beeping from one of her screens. “Actually, Reese, this one’s on you. We’ve got a hydraulic stabilizer out.”

Reese grabs her screen, but then gags at a violent bounce.

“Fix now, puke later!” Chess says quickly, worry climbing up her throat.

“Fuck, I lost contact.” Evan’s fingers fly over his own screen. “The shaking is interfering with our sensors.”

“Reese!”

“It’s not responding! I’m doing the best I can!”

“Okay, never mind. I see the site. Preparing for approach on visual.”

“Uh, Chess, that’s not exactly advisable,” Evan says, glancing over at her. “Especially not considering our current mechanical issues.” Reese gags again and gets up, bending over. “And apparently gastrointestinal issues. Reese, what the fuck?”

“Agreed.”

“Stop worrying.” Chess rolls her eyes, looking back at her crewmates. “This ship can totally handle it, can’t you, champ?” The ship violently shakes, and Chess hides her surprise. “Uh, she-she was nodding!” She takes a deep breath. “Okay, Evan, hail down to them. Let them know their ride is here.”

“Attention, lunar vessel- ACK!” Halfway through his sentence, the ship jolts, and Evan falls to the ground. “Chess!”

“Evan, what are you doing? Buckle your belt. And Reese, stop that shaking!”

“I’m try- oh, fuck.” Reese vomits into the engine cubby, and Chess groans.

Evan picks his radio back up. “Attention, lunar vessel. This is Galaxy Garrison Rescue Craft One Victor Six Three Tango. Coming in for landing and extraction. Against crew recommendations,” he adds with a mutter and a dirty look at Chess.

“Can you knock off the mutinous comments? We’re going in.”

“Look out for that overhang!” Evan calls desperately.

“No worries! My first year in flight school, wanna know what they called me?” Chess grins. “‘The Tailor’, because of how I thread the needle.”

Something crashes as they go through the loop of ice, and alarms ring from all around the ship.

“We lost a wing!” Reese yells.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Chess mumbles.

There’s another crash, and then a calm female voice sounds around the ship. “Simulation failed.”

“Nice work, Tailor,” Evan mutters scornfully as the doors slide open.

“Roll out, donkeys!” the commander yells.

~

“Let’s see if we can’t turn this complete and utter failure into a learning experience,” the commander barks. “What did they do wrong?”

One of their classmates raises their hand. “The engineer puked in the main gearbox!”

“Yes! As everyone knows, vomit is _not_ an approved lubricant for engines! What else?”

“The comm spec took off his safety harness!”

“The pilot crashed!”

“Correct!” The commander turns back to Chess, Evan, and Reese. “And worst of all, they were arguing the whole time! Hell, if you’re gonna be this bad individually, you might as well be able to work as a team! The Galaxy Garrison exists to turn young cadets like you into the next generation of elite astroexplorers. These kinds of mental mistakes cost the lives of the women on the Kerberos mission!”

Evan steps forward. “That’s not true, sir! They- mmph!”

Chess slaps a hand over his mouth. “Sorry, sir! I think he, uh, hit his head too hard when he fell out of his chair. But point taken!”

The commander approaches Chess as she lets go of Evan. “I shouldn’t need to remind you that the only reason you’re here is because the best pilot in your class had a discipline issue and flunked out.”

A cold flash of anger sparks in Chess’s stomach. God, no matter what she does, she can’t escape the shadow of Kate fucking Dalton. No matter what, she’ll never be as good as that flunked-out loser, at least in the eyes of the Garrison.

“Next!”

~

“Lights out in five!”

“We shouldn’t be doing this,” Reese mumbles to Chess.

“You heard Commander Iverson! We need to, like, bond as a team or whatever.” Chess scans the emptying hallway. “We’ll grab Evan, hit the town, loosen up…”

The lights shut off.

“Okay, for the record, I’m gonna say this now - this is a bad idea,” Reese whimpers.

Chess rolls her eyes and takes off down the hall, keeping her footsteps light. Reese follows, and a wave of anticipation rolls through Chess, making her grin and pick up the pace.

“You know, for someone in a space exploration program, you have the worst sense of adventure,” she comments to Reese as they stroll down the abandoned science wing.

“All your little _adventures_ end up with me in the principal’s office,” Reese says dryly, and Chess has to admit, she’s not wrong.

Chess sighs and turns her attention to the window of the lab they’re passing, and _oh shit_ , this wing isn’t as abandoned as she thought it was. The two of them duck down and creep past to stay out of view of the scientists, and Chess doesn’t breathe until they’re past the window.

“I fucking hate you,” Reese mutters, and Chess chooses to ignore it.

A few minutes later, Chess climbs out of the recycling can she’d been hiding in, and Reese climbs out of hers. “That sucked,” Reese comments, and Chess doesn’t disagree.

Evan’s door opens, and instinctively, Chess shoves Reese out of the way as their friend exits his room, a backpack half his size on his shoulders. Then he takes off down the hallway, and he’s gone before Chess can think to call his name.

“Well, where the hell is he going?” Chess thinks aloud.

~

“You come up here to rock out?” Chess asks, slipping off Evan’s headphones. She and Reese found him on the roof of the Garrison, focusing intently on the screens in front of him.

Evan yelps and nearly falls off the roof. “FUCK- oh, uh, hey, guys! I’m- I’m just looking at the stars!”

Chess turns her attention to Evan’s tech. “Where did you even get this stuff? It’s definitely not Garrison tech.”

“I built it,” he says, and there’s definitely a touch of pride in his voice.

“You built all this?” Reese asks, her tone full of awe, and tries to touch it, but Evan smacks her hand away.

“Stop it!” Evan turns back to Chess. “With this thing, I can scan all the way to the edge of the solar system.”

“All the way to Kerberos?” Chess prods.

Evan wilts.

“Dude, you go _ballistic_ every time the instructors bring it up.” Chess crosses her arms. “What’s your deal?”

Reese touches a satellite, and Evan’s attention whips towards her. “Second warning!” he snaps.

“Look, Evan, if we’re gonna bond as a team, we can’t have any secrets.” Chess tries to move his attention back to her.

Evan taps a button on his keyboard and stares at his shoes. “Fine. The world as you know it is about to change. The Kerberos mission wasn’t lost because of a malfunction or crew mistake or- FOR THE LOVE OF FUCK, STOP TOUCHING MY EQUIPMENT!” he screams at Reese, cutting himself off. “Anyways, I’ve been scanning the system and picking up alien radio chatter.”

“Uh, what? Aliens?” Reese demands.

Chess shakes her head. “Okay, so you’re insane. Got it, good to know.”

Evan scowls. “I’m serious. They keep repeating one word - ‘Voltron’.” He holds up a notebook with the word on it, surrounded by doodles. “And tonight, it’s going crazier than it’s ever gone before.”

“How crazy?” Chess asks carefully, but before he can answer, Commander Iverson’s voice comes over the PA.

“ATTENTION, STUDENTS. THIS IS NOT A DRILL. WE ARE ON LOCKDOWN. SECURITY SITUATION ZULU NINER. REPEAT: ALL STUDENTS ARE TO REMAIN IN THE BARRACKS UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE.”

“What’s going on?” Reese asks, getting to her feet. Something in the sky catches her attention. “Oh my God, is that a meteor?”

Chess’s head snaps up to look at what Reese is looking at - a glowing shape in the sky, headed right for them.

“A… a _very_ big meteor?” Reese adds softly.

Evan snatches a pair of binoculars out of his bag and holds them up to his eyes. “Oh my fucking God- it’s a ship!” He yelps as Chess takes the binoculars and holds them in front of her own eyes, Evan’s hands still on them.

“Holy shit,” she breathes. “I can’t believe this! That’s not one of ours!”

“It’s one of theirs,” Evan agrees.

“Wait wait wait. There really _are_ aliens out there?” Reese demands.

Her question is answered by a resounding boom as the ship hits the ground in the desert before them.

The three of them watch the rovers roll out from the garage, their lights bright enough to illuminate almost to the wreck.

“C’mon!” Evan yells, snatching up his bag and shoving his tech into it. “We’ve gotta see that ship!”

Chess follows without argument, calling Reese’s name over her shoulder.

“This is the worst team-building exercise ever,” Reese groans, but follows.

~

They set up camp on top of the cliff by the wreck, staring down at the tent the Garrison almost immediately had set up. The ship is a deep grey, with purple lights, and as Chess stares, she wonders aloud what it is. The entire thing is heavily guarded, so much that there’s no way they’d make it past.

“Oh, dangit,” Reese says. “I, uh, guess there’s nothing we can do besides head back to the barracks, right?”

“Wait.” Evan’s fingers fly over his keyboard, and he doesn’t tear his gaze off the screen. “They set up a camera in there, and I’ve got its feed. Check it out!”

Chess’s eyes widen as she sees the woman clamped to the table on the screen. “That’s Cairo Adekoya! From the missing Kerberos mission!”

“Aliens are coming!” Cairo yells.

“She’s my hero,” Chess says reverently.

“Guess she’s not dead in space after all.” Reese rocks back so she’s putting all her weight on the balls of her feet.

Evan lightly touches the screen. “Where’s the rest of the crew?”

“We have to find Voltron,” Cairo continues.

Evan gasps. “Voltron!”

“Sir, look,” one of the scientists surrounding Cairo says. “It appears her arm has been replaced with a cyborg prosthetic.”

Iverson sighs. “Put her under until we know what that thing can do.”

Cairo screams, but then she’s out.

“They didn’t ask about the rest of the crew.” Evan’s voice cracks, but Chess is too distracted to notice.

“What are they doing? She’s a legend, they won’t even listen to her?” Chess throws her hands in the air. “This is bullshit.”

“We’ve gotta get her out.” Evan shuts his laptop and shoves it into his bag.

Reese stands up. “Uh, as always, hate to be the voice of reason, but weren’t we watching on TV because we couldn’t get past the guards?”

“That was before we were properly motivated,” Chess says matter-of-factly. “We just gotta think. We could tunnel in?”

“Or grab some hazmat suits and sneak in like med techs?” Evan suggests.

“Or we dress up like cooks, head back to the dorms, sneak into the commissary-”

Chess holds up a hand, and Reese shuts up.

“We need a distraction,” Chess decides.

A series of explosions sounds from the cliffs opposite them, and the three of them shout, tripping over each other.

“Is that the aliens? I hope it’s not the aliens! Oh my God, they got here so fast!” Reese cries.

“No, those explosions were a distraction for her,” Evan says, pointing.

A hovercraft is sinking to the ground behind the crash, the rider crouched low over the controls, brown hair blowing behind her and her eyes focused on the tent.

“The Garrison is headed towards the blast, and she’s sneaking in from the other side!” Evan continues.

Chess narrows her eyes. The figure has a bandana tied around the lower half of her face, but the scattering of freckles and messy brown hair…

“Oh, _hell_ no,” Chess shouts. “She is _not_ gonna beat us in there! She’s _always_ trying to one-up me!”

“Who is it?” Reese asks.

Chess is already running. “Kate!”

“Who?” Evan asks.

“Are you sure?”

Chess scowls. “100%. I’d recognize that stupid ponytail anywhere.”

“Who’s Kate?” Evan demands, jumping down. He’s shorter than Chess and Reese, but Chess doesn’t pause to let him catch up.

~

_God, the Garrison needs to change their passkeys. Especially when former students go rogue._

The doors slide open, and Kate can’t help but feel slightly badass as the doctors in hazmat suits turn to see her. Cairo, on the bench, is knocked out and tied up, and something in Kate’s stomach turns over when she sees her former mentor.

“These readings are off the chart,” one of the doctors is saying. Kate thinks it might have been a good idea to use her bandana as a mask.

The doctors shout and run towards her, but she’s faster. The first one hits the ground with a thump, and then groans as the second one falls on top of them. The third is trickier, but soon he’s on the ground, too, and Kate rolls her eyes. She leaps over the prone body of the third scientist and stares at Cairo, unconsciously pulling down her bandana. It’s stupid, but Cairo needs to recognize her.

Cairo groans as Kate gently shakes her, and her eyes don’t open. A streak of her hair has gone snow white since Kate last saw her, which is odd, but she doesn’t have time to dwell on it as she cuts Cairo’s bonds.

“Nope, no, no you don’t! I’m saving Cairo!” says a voice from the door as Kate pulls Cairo to her feet, supporting all her weight. _I’m too fucking short for this._

The voice is coming from a tall girl with a brown braided ponytail, who’s glaring at her. Behind her is a tall girl with brown space buns, and a shorter, Latino boy with a backpack that’s basically his size.

Kate raises an eyebrow. “Who are you?”

The girl puts Cairo’s other arm around herself. “Who am I? Uh, the name’s _Chess_?” She waits, like she expects Kate to recognize her. “We were in the same class at the Garrison?”

“Really? Are you an engineer?” Kate asks, growing impatient.

“No! I’m a _pilot_!” Chess says, frustrated. “We were rivals, remember? You know, Chess and Kate, neck and neck.”

“Oh, wait, I remember you. You’re a _cargo pilot_ ,” Kate says spitefully.

“I-I- no, I’m not! At least, not anymore. I’m fighter class now, thanks to you washing out.” Chess sticks her chin out proudly, and Kate rolls her eyes again.

“Well, congratulations,” she says sarcastically as they start to move towards the exit.

~

Reese has never hated Chess Belmont more than she does in this moment. “Oh, no, they’re coming back,” she mumbles as she stares through Evan’s binoculars at the returning Garrison forces. “And they don’t look happy. Guys, we gotta go.”

Chess and Kate have already dragged Cairo back to Kate’s hovercraft, and Reese and Evan follow, Evan surprisingly light on his feet despite his backpack. The hovercraft is battered and beat up, but still has a red coat of paint that’s barely chipped away. “D’you mind if we catch a ride with you?” Reese asks, but she doesn’t wait for an answer before hopping on.

Evan climbs up on the wing and reaches for Cairo, taking some of her weight so Kate can climb up. Reese follows, barely able to hold onto the smooth surface.

“Hey, is this thing gonna fit all of us?” she asks nervously.

Kate sighs and revs the engine. “No.”

And then they’re off.

“Why am I holding this chick?” Evan demands, struggling to hold Cairo’s weight with the added bonus of the hovercraft that was nearly impossible to balance on from his position.

"Hey, we did all fit!" Reese comments.

Chess looks back. "Hey, can this thing go any faster?"

"We could get rid of some non-essential weight," Kate mutters, her eyes fixed ahead.

"Oh, right!" Chess looks around, and then realization dawns on her face. "Okay, yeah, that was an insult. I get it. Very funny."

"Oh my God, Mr. Wilkens just wiped out Professor Montgomery!" Reese cries. "Wait, no, false alarm, they're fine-"

"CLIFF!" Evan shouts.

"No, no, no, what are you doing?" Chess demands. "You're not going over, are you?"

"Yup." Kate smirks and bends lower over the controls.

Chess is screaming "no, no, no!" over and over again, but Kate goes over the edge anyways.

"You're gonna kill us all!" Evan screams.

"Shut the fuck up and trust me!"

Right before they hit the canyon floor, Kate pulls up, and they take off across the desert, leaving the Garrison forces in the dust.

~

"It's good to have you back," says a voice behind Cairo. She smiles, recognizing it.

"It's good to be back."

Kate appears at her side, and together they look in the direction of the Garrison. "So?"

"... So, what?"

"Where the hell have you been?" Kate throws her hands up. "It's been a _year_. I-I missed you, fucker."

Cairo shrugs. "I dunno. It's all… it's so blurry. I wish I could tell you.” She squints, trying to remember. “I was on an alien ship, I think, but somehow I managed to escape.” Something occurs to her, and she looks at Kate. “How did you even know to come save me after the crash?”

Kate hesitates. “Come inside and see this.”

Apparently, since Cairo had disappeared, Kate had been expelled from the Garrison and now lives in a tiny wooden shack in the middle of nowhere. As the others look on, she pulls a sheet off of the wall, revealing a corkboard covered in pictures and maps, connected by strings with her messy scrawl all over sticky notes.

“What have you been working on?” Cairo breathes.

Kate shrugs, twisting the sheet around her hands nervously. “I’m not really sure how to explain it. After I got booted from the Garrison, I was kinda lost and I felt… drawn to this place. Almost like something - some type of _energy_ was telling me to search.”

Cairo waits a beat, but she doesn’t elaborate. “Search… for what?” she prods.

“Well, I didn’t really know, until I stumbled across a cave system in the hills.” She points to a picture on the corkboard. “The walls are covered in these ancient markings, and all of them depict images of a blue lion. They’re all slightly different, but there’s clues leading to some event, or arrival happening last night.” She gestures to Cairo. “And then you showed up.”

Cairo looks back at the other three teenagers. “I should thank you all for getting me out.” With a smile, she extends a hand to the girl with a brown braid. “Chess, right?”

Chess eagerly starts to shake her hand, but hesitates when she realizes it’s the alien prosthetic. That only seems to deter her for a moment, though, before she shakes it, the hand whirring softly.

She extends her hand to the other kids, the short Latino boy and the girl with space buns. The boy shakes her hand with a smile. “The nervous girl’s Reese, I’m Evan.” He hesitates. “Did- did anyone else from your crew make it out?”

Cairo shrugs. “I’m not sure. I remember the mission, and I remember being captured, but everything else is just… a blur.”

Reese raises a hand. “Hate to interrupt, but can we go back to the aliens? Are they coming? Specifically for us? Where are they this very moment?”

“I can’t really put it together. I remember a word - ‘Voltron’? I think it’s some kinda weapon they’re looking for, but I’m not sure why.”

Reese takes Evan’s bag from him. “Well, last night I was rummaging through Evan’s stuff - which, by the way, look at this picture.” She holds it up - it’s two girls who look nearly identical, one with shorter hair and the other with longer hair.

“Gimme that!” Evan snatches it back. “What were you doing in my stuff?”

“Looking for a candy bar. Anyways, I started reading his diary-”

“WHAT?”

“And I noticed the repeating series of numbers the aliens are searching for look a lot like a Fraunhofer line!”

“Frown who?” Kate asks, raising an eyebrow.

“It’s a number that describes the emission spectrum of an element,” Reese explains. “Except this one doesn’t exist on Earth. I think it might be this Voltron. I might be able to build a machine to look for it, kinda like a Voltron Geiger counter!”

“Reese, you fucking _genius_ ,” Chess says, her tone full of awe.

“It’s actually pretty fascinating!” Reese pulls a sheet of paper out of her pocket and unfolds it. “The wavelength looks like this.” 

Kate’s eyes widen, and she snatches the paper from Reese without a word. She studies it for a moment, and then holds it up to a picture on the wall.

The wavelength matches the cliff pattern almost exactly.

~

Four hours later, they’re standing at the spot where Kate took the picture. Evan and Reese have some weird Voltron Geiger counter thing - Kate doesn’t know, nor does she care. The only thing that matters is whether it can help them find Voltron.

“If nobody else will say it, I will,” Chess speaks up. “This is super freaky.”

“I’m getting a reading!” Reese announces. She starts walking, and the rest of the group follows.

They hike through the canyon for nearly an hour, following the reading on Reese’s screen. Kate is starting to wonder if all of this is bullshit when they come to the caves she’d found months ago.

“Oh for fuck’s sake,” she groans. “Why didn’t we just start _here_?”

Cairo gives her a look, and she reluctantly shuts up.

The group walks into the cave, and Kate can make out the now-familiar faint patterns on the wall, all stories about Voltron. A huge lion dancing among crowds of people, being worshipped as a god.

Chess walks up to the wall and presses a hand against one of the carvings, studying it - and jumps back with a gasp as it begins to glow.

"Okay, they've never done that before," Kate says, looking around. The group is now completely illuminated by the blue light emanating from all the carvings around them. Then more glowing blue cracks appear under their feet, and the rock crumbles, plunging all five of them into darkness.

~

Chess is starting to think Reese might have been right about this being a bad idea.

The five of them tumble through the darkness, and Chess shrieks when she hits cold water. She's apparently the first to reach the bottom of the hole, because she feels four consecutive splashes as she tries to get her bearings.

Once her heartbeat has slowed to something a bit healthier, she sits up and looks around, and her attention is riveted by something that definitely doesn’t belong in a cave in the middle of nowhere.

It’s a massive, translucent blue dome with a simple hexagonal pattern on it, and within the dome is a giant robotic blue lion.

“Is this the Voltron?” Evan asks softly, almost reverently.

“It must be,” Cairo says back. None of them have torn their gaze away from the lion.

“This has gotta be what’s been causing all this crazy energy out here,” Kate thinks aloud, and starts walking towards the lion. “Looks like there’s a force field around it.”

The rest of the group follows her, and as an experiment, Chess starts walking in a zigzag pattern. “Hey, does anyone else get the feeling this is staring right at them? The eyes are definitely following me.”

She feels something in her stomach, almost like a tug towards the lion. She doesn’t even realize it, but somehow she starts walking faster, like she and the lion are magnets drawn to each other.

Kate reaches the lion first and presses both hands up against the force field. It shimmers and ripples a bit, but otherwise doesn’t move. “I wonder how we get through this?”

“Maybe you just have to knock.” She’s not actually expecting anything to happen, but Chess knocks lightly on the force field, her gaze locked on the lion.

The force field suddenly glows brighter, then falls, leaving the lion completely unguarded. A series of markings on the rock beneath it begin to glow blue, and the rest of the team yells. Chess is oddly unafraid, though - something about all of this feels _right_.

The lion fades away in her sight, replaced by some sort of vision - a blue sky, lightly streaked with clouds, and five streaks of color - purple, green, red, blue, yellow. Each streak is led by a lion - the blue one they just found, but also a black one, a green one, a red one, and a yellow one. They come together in the sky in a burst of light, and when it fades, a huge humanoid robot stands in their place. The head and torso resemble the black lion, the arms resemble the red and green lions, and the legs resemble the blue and yellow lions.

The vision fades, and Chess is left staring at the blue lion again.

“Did everyone just see that?” she asks.

“Voltron is a robot!” Reese yells. “A huge, awesome robot!”

“And this is just one part of it!” Evan adds. “I wonder where the rest is?”

“This is what they’re looking for,” Cairo realizes.

“It’s incredible,” Kate breathes.

With a loud whirring noise, the robot bends its head down towards them. Reese shrieks, and even Cairo takes a step back, but Chess isn’t afraid. It’s like she’s on autopilot when the jaws open and she walks in without hesitation.

When she approaches what must be the pilot’s seat, the doors open for her, and she takes a seat in the chair. With a laugh, she props a leg up on her knee, but then yelps as the chair slides forward abruptly so she’s sitting in front of the controls. As the others file in, several screens light up around her, illuminating all of them with a gentle blue light. Chess can’t help but grin as she looks around. The windshield is completely blue, but as she looks, it fades away and she can see the cavern.

“Woah,” Evan says breathlessly.

“So awesome!” Chess comments.

“Ok, kinda need to point out - you know, just so we’re all aware - that we are currently in some kind of futuristic alien cat head,” Reese says, her voice shaking just a bit with nerves.

For just a moment, Chess hears something - like a deep purring, a rumble that shakes her to her core. It’s gone as quick as it came, leaving her staring at the controls.

“Woah, did you guys hear that?” she asks, looking behind her at the others.

“Hear… what?” Kate asks.

“I think… I think it might be talking to me.” Just as an experiment, Chess presses a few buttons on her dash.

The lion stands up and roars, and Reese screams again.

“Ok, ok. Now let’s try _this_!” Chess grabs what look like the main controls and pushes them forward, and the lion takes off, blasting through the rock.

As soon as it’s free, it almost seems to take control from Chess. She couldn’t stop it if she tried, but she doesn’t mind - something in the pit of her stomach trusts the lion with her life. And the others’ lives, she guesses.

All she can hear is Reese screaming and Evan yelling curses in both Spanish and English. Cairo is clinging to the back of Chess’s seat, and Kate has sunk to her knees to keep her center of gravity lower.

As Chess tries out a few loop-de-loops, Kate shouts “YOU ARE THE WORST PILOT _EVER_ ,” her voice cracking.

Even Chess starts to scream a bit as they get closer to the Garrison. She can see the weapons mounted around campus, and suddenly she’s a bit terrified for her life.

Before the Garrison even has time to power up, though, the lion takes off, heading towards space.

“Where are you going?” Kate demands.

“I’m not doing anything! It’s like it’s on autopilot.” Chess freezes. “Fuck, it says there’s an alien ship approaching Earth. I think we have to stop it.”

“What did it say exactly?” Evan asks suspiciously.

“Well, I mean… it’s not really saying anything? More like feeding ideas into my brain.”

“If this thing is the weapon they want, then what if we just… gave it to them?” Reese suggests nervously. “Maybe they’d leave us alone? Sorry, lion, nothing personal.”

“I don’t think you understand,” Cairo says. “These _monsters_ are a plague spreading through the galaxy, murdering and destroying everything and everyone in their path. They won’t stop until they’re the only race remaining. You can’t bargain with them.”

“Oh.” Reese awkwardly smiles. “Never mind, then.”

The lion breaks through the atmosphere, and a chill runs up Chess’s spine. She’s flown the simulator more times than she can count, but that’s nothing compared to actually being in space. She’s just looking around, trying to get her bearings, when she sees the alien ship.

It’s huge, and a deep purple that doesn’t seem real. Nothing has ever been so intimidating, not even Commander Iverson.

“Is that _really_ an alien ship?” Reese asks in a small voice.

“They found me,” Cairo says softly.

The ship starts firing, and Evan yelps and crouches next to Kate. “Chess, get us out of here!”

“Hang on!” Oh, of _course_ , _now_ the lion decides to let her take control instead of staying on autopilot. She yanks the controls up, and the lion makes a huge arc around the ship, avoiding the blasts. Suddenly, it accelerates, heading away from Earth, and the unfamiliar ship follows.

“Okay, okay, I think I know what to do!” Chess yells.

“Careful! This isn’t the simulator!” Evan reminds her.

“That’s good. I always wreck the simulator.”

“We’re fucked,” Kate groans.

Chess grabs a random lever and pulls, and a beam of light gathers in the lion’s jaw and then rakes the side of the ship, leaving a glowing strip of pale blue in its wake. That gives her an idea, and she surges forward, dodging the lasers and raking her lion’s claws across the ship, leaving uncountable explosions in her wake.

“Not bad,” Cairo comments, and when Chess spares a glance in her direction, she’s smiling.

“Ok, time to get them away from Earth.” Chess sends the ship forward, as fast as she can, and they tear through the solar system, the stars becoming just streaks of light in the windshield.

As fast as the lion is, the ship might be faster. “They’re gaining on us!” Evan snaps.

“But they’re not shooting,” Chess says suspiciously. “Just… chasing.”

“Oh my God, do we seriously think having aliens follow us is good?” Reese complains. “I’ve gotta be honest, guys, I am not entirely on board with this new direction.”

Kate is staring out the window. “Where are we?”

Cairo looks like someone just punched her in the stomach. “We’re at the edge of the solar system. That-that’s Kerberos.”

Evan shakes his head. “Um, no, no. It takes months for any of our ships to get out here - there’s no way we made it in a few seconds.”

Something appears in front of them - a giant, vertical disk, with smoky spirals within a blue ring with an intricate pattern.

“WHAT IS THAT?” Reese screams.

“Ok, I know this seems crazy, but I think the lion wants us to go through there,” Chess says.

“Where does it lead?” Evan asks.

“I dunno.” Chess looks back. “Cairo, you’re the senior officer. What should we do?”

Cairo doesn’t hesitate. “Whatever the hell is happening, the lion knows more than we do. I say we trust it, but it’s not my decision. We’re a team now. We should decide together.”

Kate swallows. “I’m with Cai.” Reese nods, and Evan puts a hand on Chess’s shoulder.

Chess sighs. “Guess we’re all cutting class tomorrow.”

She steers the lion forward, into the portal, and everything goes black.


	2. The Rise of Voltron - Part 2

The portal spits them out in front of a planet that, upon first glance, looks like Earth. But when Kate looks closer, the continents are all wrong.

Reese bends over and vomits, and Kate cringes, slapping a gloved hand over her nose.

“So sorry,” Reese says, then pukes again.

Evan shrugs, adjusting his glasses. “I’m just surprised it took this long.”

Cairo is staring out the window. “I don’t recognize any of these constellations. We’re a long way from Earth.”

Chess loosens her grip on the controls, but the lion doesn’t stop. “It wants to go to this planet. I think… I think it’s coming home.”

She doesn’t even realize it, but Kate crowds around the chair with everyone else as the ship enters the atmosphere, barely able to stay on her feet. She absolutely hates being so close to the others (and Reese’s breath could kill), but she can’t move.

“Ok, I can’t be the only one having second thoughts about trusting a mysterious robotic lion and going through a wormhole, right?” Reese yells.

“It got us away from that alien warship,” Chess argues.

Kate wants to slap her. “I dunno if you’ve noticed, but we’re in an alien warship.”

“What, are you scared?”

“With you at the helm? Terrified.”

“Knock it off,” Cairo says. “Nobody’s happy to be in this situation, but we’re in it, and arguing solves nothing.”

“So.. what do we do?” Evan asks.

“First, we gotta find out where we’re headed. Chess?”

“The lion’s gone silent. I’m sorry.”

Kate manages to step away as the lion slows down, leaning against the door. “Well, this is just a wild guess, but I’m gonna say it’s the castle up ahead.”

There’s a chorus of gasps from the others as they approach the castle. It’s mainly white, with some black panels and blue veins, and has five pointed turrets - one in the center, with four surrounding.

The lion approaches the castle with some oohs and ahs from the others. Kate stays quiet, but she’s impressed. It lands with a thud in front of a massive set of black and white doors with a teal window in the center.

“Stay on guard,” Cairo says as they file out of the lion. “My crew was captured by aliens once. I’m not letting it happen again.”

When the Garrison told her Cairo had gone missing and was presumed dead, Kate’s first reaction had been to scream “YOU’RE WRONG!” and run out to where the hovercrafts were parked, leaning against the one Cairo always used and choking on the sobs that clawed up her throat, digging her hands into her hair and screaming “Cai!” She’d probably sat out there for hours, crying and trying to rationalize this.

Every time Cairo’s crew had sent messages back to the Garrison, she’d sneak in a message for Kate in a code they’d made together not long after Cairo got the Garrison to let her in. Of course, the higher-ups knew about this code and what it said, but it still felt like a fun little game for just the two of them. The next day, as soon as her classes were over, Kate found herself walking to the control room like always before realizing there wouldn’t be another message from Cairo, because Cairo was gone.

But Cairo isn’t gone, after all. Cairo is here, with a new prosthetic arm and a scar across her nose and a streak of white hair, alive and having just escaped from imprisonment by aliens. She can’t tell how she’s feeling, so Kate just goes with relief.

As soon as Cairo, the last one, is out of the lion, its jaws snap shut and it stands up straight and roars a metallic roar.

“OH, I KNEW IT WAS GONNA EAT US!” Reese cries.

Kate stumbles as the doors slide open, making the entire courtyard shake. The interior of the castle is oddly dark - she can barely see past the entrance. From what she can see, the entire main hall is completely empty.

Reese glances back at the lion. “Oh. You opened the door. Guess I was wrong about you.”

Kate rolls her eyes and leads the way into the dark castle.

~

The group stops just inside the entryway, staring at a set of steps leading up into more hallways. “HELLO?” Reese yells, making Cairo jump. At the four matching glares she gets, Reese just shrugs.

“You know, from the size of the lion, I sorta thought these steps would be bigger,” Evan comments.

Suddenly, the dark hall comes to life, pale light flooding the room and making Cairo instinctively want to cover her eyes. A teal beam of light shoots down from the ceiling, enveloping the whole group.

“Hold for identity scan,” says a calm female voice as each person is scanned.

“Why are we here?” Cairo demands. “What do you want from us?”

There’s no answer, but the beam of light retracts, leaving the lights still on, and after a moment of hesitation, they start up the stairs.

Cairo can’t quite put her finger on it, but there’s undeniably something different about this castle from where she’d been held prisoner by the galra.

The galra ships had been all deep purples and greys, halls so dark you couldn’t see more than a few meters down them. The ships had been full of sharp angles and cruel lines, and every light had been purple or red.

The lines of this castle swooped overhead in gentle arcs. The walls met overhead in a curved point without any ceiling. The whole thing felt open, large, even the hallways. And as they walked, aqua lights switched on ahead of them, illuminating their path with a light that somehow felt both too bright and like the castle was welcoming them home. Cairo couldn’t tell if the lights were following them, or if they were following the lights.

It feels like they’ve been walking for hours in silence before Kate falls into step beside her. Cairo wonders if she should say anything, but Kate is fiddling with her fingerless gloves and not looking at her, so Cairo lets it go. It’s actually sort of nice to just walk with Kate - before the Kerberos mission, the two of them could spend hours together in silence.

Cairo still remembers the day she’d met Kate. Kate had been in seventh grade, barely more than just a kid, and Cairo was sent from the Garrison to give her class a talk about being an astronaut. Kate was in the back of the class, near the window, and Cairo remembers the obvious lack of attention and how she stared out at the parking lot.

In the last half hour, Cairo brought the entire class outside to the small simulator she’d brought with her. This one was barely more than a video game, nothing like the real simulators the cadets practiced with, but perfect for seventh grade kids who might have a secret talent for flying.

The first fourteen kids that flew it crashed. Cairo tuned out their yells of frustration and excitement to watch the girl with the brown hair and freckles, who stared at the simulator with a look Cairo recognized, but seemed too shy to step forward and fly it.

“Hey, let the emo kid have a turn!” one of the kids had called. The girl who Cairo had been watching had snapped her head up, her eyes wide and scared, but she’d set her jaw and stepped forward, taking a seat in the pilot’s chair.

First ten seconds. Didn’t crash. Didn’t crash after thirty, or a minute, and then she surpassed the last record and just kept going. The cheers from the other kids had quieted down to awe-filled silence, as they all stared at her.

“Wow, she’s finally good at something!” another kid commented.

That had struck a nerve, and the girl slammed the ship into a rock, purposefully crashing it, and then leaped out of the simulator and ran to Cairo’s car. She’d left it unlocked and the key had apparently fallen out of her pocket, because the kid once again showed off her incredible piloting skills and drove away.

But something felt off to Cairo. That wasn’t the kid acting up to be a jerk - that was a girl who knew she was talented but never had an outlet for it. That was a brilliant kid trapped in a seventh grade classroom.

Obviously, for that stunt, the girl had ended up in the principal’s office. But Cairo had demanded to be let in, and when she was, there was the girl, sitting in a chair too big for her, her hands furiously and anxiously tugging the fabric of her shirt to the point where Cairo was afraid it would rip.

“I want this kid for the Garrison,” Cairo had stated fiercely.

The principal gave her a confused look. “I’m afraid we can’t reward this kind of behavior-”

“You didn’t see how she flew. She was born for the pilot’s chair.” Cairo turned and bent down so she was at the kid’s level. “What’s your name?”

She’d blinked, looking exactly like a deer in headlights. “I-I’m Kate.”

“Kate. How’d you like to be a cadet at the Garrison?”

As they’d walked out of the office together to go gather Kate’s things, Kate had stopped at the door, arms wrapped around herself. “I stole your car.”

“Yeah, but you didn’t crash it and you didn’t get off campus, so I’d consider that to be no harm done,” Cairo said breezily. “And anyways, once we’re at the Garrison, you won’t have the time to steal cars.”

Kate had smiled then, a real smile, and when she began training at the Garrison, Cairo had known she’d made the right call.

That was five years ago. Kate’s seventeen now, and she’s walking next to Cairo through the halls of an alien castle. Cairo’s missed that look in her eyes, the excited sense of adventure - it’s the same look she had when Cairo had brought her to the Garrison, when she’d flown the simulator the first time, and every single time Cairo had brought her out on the hovercrafts. And she has it now as she looks around, every monotonous hallway getting the same reaction from her.

They might have been walking for minutes or for hours when they finally come to what looks like a control room. It’s massive, with five stations in even positions around the room. At the front is what looks like a giant, entire-wall window, but when Cairo gets closer, she realizes it’s a screen showing the outside of the castle.

“What is this place?” Evan wonders aloud.

“It doesn’t look galra.” Cairo doesn’t let her guard down yet, but she’s starting to think this place might be safe.

A whirring noise near the back of the room sends Cairo’s heart leaping into her throat, and she turns to see two pods rising from the floor. Through the teal outer shells, she can see a humanoid figure in each, and she wishes she had some sort of weapon.

“Are they… dead?” Chess asks softly.

Then one opens, revealing a tall figure in a delicate blue dress, with waves of honey-colored hair around her shoulders, and pink triangle shapes under her eyes.

Her eyes open.

~

“Father!” someone calls, and Annleigh vaguely registers that it might be her. She tries to step out of the sleeping pod, but trips, and braces herself for the impact against the Castle floor. But someone catches her, and as she blinks sleep from her eyes, she registers blue eyes and brown hair, pulled back tightly.

“Ack, hello, hi,” says whoever caught her.

“Who are you?” Annleigh asks suspiciously.

“I-I’m Chess.”

Annleigh’s gaze falls to her ears, which look weird - they’re rounded, with no pointed tips. “What’s wrong with your ears? They’re hideous.”

“Hey! Rude!” Chess says angrily. Annleigh immediately ducks out of her arms, twists her arm behind her back, and shoves her to the ground.

“Who are you? What are you doing in my castle? And where is King Alfor?” she demands.

“A giant blue lion brought us here, ask it!” Chess cries desperately.

Us?

Annleigh looks around, and a cold chill travels up her spine when she sees four other people, all with strange ears and no Altean marks.

“How do you have the blue lion? Where’s its paladin?” she asks, letting her go. “What are you doing here.” Something clicks in her brain. “Unless… how long has it been?”

One of the strangers steps forward - a woman probably a bit older than Annleigh, with dark skin marred only by a scar across her nose, and curly dark hair with a streak of white. “We don’t know what you’re talking about. Who are you? Maybe we can help.”

Annleigh stands up straighter. “I am Princess Annleigh of planet Altea.” She starts moving towards the controls in the center of the room. “I have to figure out where we are, and how long we’ve been asleep.” She places her hands on the sensors, and the entire room whirs to life.

“So that’s how that works,” says a boy in a blue jacket and glasses.

Annleigh barely registers the sound of another sleeping pod opening behind her, or how Farrah’s voice fills the room. She barely hears Chess and Farrah arguing before the one who’d asked her name intervenes. All she’s concerned with is sifting through the Castle’s archives, trying to find the date.

“It can’t be,” she says breathlessly as she finds it.

“What is it?” Farrah asks, appearing at her side.

“We’ve been asleep for 10,000 years!”

Annleigh barely remembers going into the pod. She remembers the control room of the Castle lit up with orange light, remembers Zarkon’s grin from the largest screen, remembers how he said he’d arrive soon to collect Voltron. She remembers begging her father to fight, but how he’d turned away, told her he loved her, and locked her in a sleeping pod. And now, 10,000 years later, she’s here in the control room of the Castle, surrounded by strangers and unaware of the result of the conflict with the galra.

“Planet Altea, our entire solar system, has been destroyed,” she says, her fingers flying over the screen. “Father, our entire civilization… gone.” A spike of anger appears among the crushing sadness. “Zarkon.”

The one who’d asked her name gasps. “Zarkon?”

“He was the king of the galra. A vile creature, enemy to all free people.”

“I-I think I was his prisoner.”

The girl next to her, with a brown ponytail, green jacket, and fingerless gloves, looks up at her with wide eyes.

Annleigh shakes her head, ignoring the terror in the pit of her stomach. “No. It’s been 10,000 years, he can’t be alive.”

“I don’t know how to explain it, but I’m sure it’s true. He’s searching for some superweapon called Voltron.”

“He’s searching for it because he knows it’s the only thing that could defeat him.” Annleigh lifts her chin. “Which is why we must find it before he does.”

~

“C’mon, Princess, it’s been 10,000 years. You have to eat!” Farrah encourages.

Annleigh doesn’t tear her gaze away from the screen. “I’m not hungry.”

“10,000 years,” Chess marvels. “That’s like, a thousand plus ten!”

“Times ten,” Kate corrects.

“Whatever, dropout.”

“I swear to fucking God-”

“Girls,” Cairo warns.

Reese is holding a plate of something green, trying to figure out what it is. “I dunno how you’re not hungry. I haven’t eaten since breakfast, and I’m starving.”

“Yeah, but you’ve thrown up, like, five times,” Evan points out.

“Good point.”

“I can’t believe your civilization created such insanely advanced technology 10,000 years ago,” Cairo says, looking around.

“The Altean empire was an incredible place,” Farrah says with pride, but then she wilts. “But now it is gone. We are the last Alteans left.”

Annleigh stops typing for a moment and leans against the controls, her entire body shakig with tears. Reese wonders if she should help, but then Annleigh’s attention is grabbed by a squeaking noise that sounds around the castle.

Annleigh crosses the room to her sleeping pod and looks inside, a smile spreading across her face as four pastel colored mice hop out. “Farrah, look! Maybe we aren’t the last left alive after all.”

An alarm begins to blare across the room, and one of the screens goes red. Farrah runs to it, the color draining from her face. “Princess, there’s a galra cruiser on its way here right now.”

“How did they find us?” Annleigh demands.

Chess glares at Kate. “I’m not sure, but I bet it’s Kate’s fault.”

“Say whatever you gotta say to make yourself feel better, after getting us stuck on the other side of a wormhole!”

“I’ll stick you in a wormhole!”

“Knock it off, cadets, this is no time to point fingers,” Cairo yells. “We need to work as a team. How long do we have before the ship arrives?”

“At their speed?” Farrah counts on her fingers. “Well, uh, carry the two… I would say we probably have a couple of days.”

“Let them come,” Annleigh says. “By the time they’re here, the five of you will have reformed Voltron. We will destroy Zarkon’s empire.”

“Princess, there are five lions. How will we find the rest?” Cairo asks.

~

As Annleigh stands in the center of a beam of light around the main controls, Farrah says in a stage whisper, “King Alfor connected the lions to her life force. She’s the key to finding them.”

Suddenly, a hologram of the universe blazes to life around the room, a 3D model showing them the stars and planets. Five lion holograms also pop up around the room.

“These are coordinates,” Evan realizes. “The black lion looks like it’s in the same place as the blue lion.”

“That’s because it’s hidden in the Castle,” Annleigh explains. “It can only be freed once the other four lions are present.

“As you have found, the lions choose their paladins,” she continues. “It’s a bond that cannot be forced.

“The black lion is the decisive head of Voltron. Its pilot is a born leader and is in control at all times. Their men will follow without hesitation. Cairo, you will pilot the black lion.”

Cairo stands up straight, lifting her chin, and nods.

“The green lion has an inquisitive personality. It needs a pilot of intellect, and daring. Evan, you will pilot the green lion.”

Evan grins and stares at the hologram of his lion.

“The blue lion-”

“Takes the best pilot of the bunch?” Chess guesses with a grin. Kate wants to punch that stupid grin off her face.

Annleigh rolls her eyes. “The yellow lion is caring and kind. Its pilot puts the need of others above their own. Reese, you will pilot the yellow lion.”

Reese’s eyes widen, but she manages a smile.

“The red lion is temperamental, and the most difficult to master. It’s the fastest and most agile, but also the most unstable. Its pilot must rely more on instincts than just skill. Kate, you will pilot the red lion.”

It’s way too hard not to smile as she hears that.

“The problem is, I cannot locate the red lion’s coordinates just yet,” Annleigh says apologetically. “There must be something wrong with the Castle. It might need some work after 10,000 years.”

“We’ll find it soon!” Farrah stands up tall. “They don’t call me the ‘Farranic’ for nothing!” After a moment of no reactions, she sighs. “You know, because it sounds like mechanic? Farranic? Mechanic? It’s not- doesn’t sound exactly the same-”

Kate is seriously going to stab someone, and it might not be Chess.

“Once the lions are united, you will form Voltron,” Annleigh interrupts. “The most powerful warrior ever known, Defender of the Universe.”

“Wait, so we’re going to be flying lions, got that part,” Reese says. “How do lions turn into legs?”

Annleigh smiles gently. “You will see.”

“We don’t have much time,” Cairo says. “Me and Evan will go after the green lion. Reese, Chess, you two go after the yellow lion. Kate, wait here until Annleigh can locate the red lion.”

“In the meantime, I’ll get the Castle’s defenses ready,” Annleigh says. “They’ll be needed.”

“I’ll ready a pod and load the coordinates of the green lion,” Farrah adds. “The good news is, the yellow and green lions both appear to be on peaceful planets!”

“Please hurry,” Annleigh says. “I can only hold the wormholes open for a few of your hours.”

The five of them nod.

“Okay, so we’re doing this,” Evan says.

“Yeah.” Kate can’t resist a grin this time. “Yeah, we are.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mentor and mentee Cairo and Kate. Thank you for your time.


	3. The Rise of Voltron - Part 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Slight TW - Chess begins to have a panic attack in part of one of her sections. I've marked it off with asterisks, in case you need to avoid it.

Cairo and Evan’s pod lands in the middle of the jungle.

After double-checking that the air is safe to breathe, the two of them climb out, swatting branches out of their way, and hike for a bit, following a map Farrah gave them until they come to a river.

“Look,” Evan says, pointing to a boat. The figurehead is a lion. “We’re on the right track.”

Cairo smiles and glances downstream. Next to them - _holy shit what the FUCK is that?!?_

Evan yells and jumps behind Cairo, and the two of them stare for a second at the giant, sloth-like _thing_ standing beside them. It doesn’t seem hostile, though, and after a second, Evan carefully steps away from Cairo.

“It’s just a….” He trails off. “Whatever that thing is.”

The thing walks away, then turns and beckons to them.

“I think it wants us to get in its canoe,” Evan guesses.

“Then let’s go.”

Evan gives her a _what the fuck_ look.

“Hey, I’ve been locked up by aliens for a year. This is nothing.”

Despite his caution, Evan gets into the canoe eagerly, beaming. He’s buzzing with energy, and Cairo guesses it’s because they’re so close to his lion.

They were close to hers, back at the Castle. She’d tried so hard to feel it, but couldn’t. What if she wasn’t cut out to be a paladin, let alone the _black_ paladin? What kind of paladin can’t sense their lion when it’s so close?

The journey down the river is calm and quiet, and Cairo, inexplicably, despite her worries, finds herself relaxing. The water is a gorgeous blue-green, and the sky is so blue it feels impossible. The air is warm, and humid without being heavy, and Cairo feels like she might have reached paradise. Sometimes aliens that remind her of Pokemon creatures pop out of the bushes, and more than once Cairo has to reach to catch Evan before he leans so far to get a look that he falls out of the boat.

Eventually, they come to a huge bridge-like rock formation, and engraved in it is a seal with a robotic lion.

“I wonder if Chess and Reese are having as good a time as us?” Evan wonders.

~

“I THOUGHT FARRAH SAID THIS PLANET WAS PEACEFUL!” Reese screams as they dodge the beams from small galra battleships chasing them.

Chess takes a sharp turn to the right. “Well, maybe peaceful means something different in Altean!”

Reese loses her balance and hits the doors at the back, and then gives up on trying to get to her feet, bracing herself against the doors. Alarms are blaring, she’s screaming, Chess is barely dodging the shots.

If they make it back, Reese is going to _murder_ Farrah.

A series of shots knocks them off balance, and they tumble towards the canyon. Chess just barely manages to pull the lion up right before they hit the ground, and then they take off down the canyon.

Reese pulls out the tracker Farrah gave her. “Okay, according to the coordinates, we are right on top of the yellow lion.” She looks up and sees a cave in front of them. “It must be in there, where they’re mining. They don’t even know the lion is there. Or maybe they just got here? And they’re digging for the lion? What do you think?”

Chess’s glare could kill. “Who fucking cares? Just go get it!” She looks forward again. “I’m dropping you down there.”

“Wha- me? Down there? Alone? No, no, not happening.”

Chess hits a few switches, and suddenly Reese is tucking her knees up to her chest and bracing for the moment when she hits the canyon floor.

She rolls until she’s in the cave, ducking behind a huge rock for safety as she quickly rewires the transport to bring her down into the cave. “Yeah, sure, that’s cool,” she mutters. “Just drop me off on an _alien planet_. It’s only occupied by mean purple aliens that are actively trying to kill me, but whatever.” The wires spark. “Just ignore them and go connect with a big, yellow, mechanical alien cat. Easy-peasy. That all makes a lot of sense to me.”

The entire platform she’s sitting on whirs to life, and she ducks below the low wall to hide from the blasts as she slowly sinks into the mine. As she travels down the tunnel, yellow carvings on the walls that look like the blue ones back on Earth start to light up, and anticipation pools in her stomach.

The mines are lit by the purple lights Reese has already started to associate with the galra, and the dim carvings are just barely visible. There’s evidence of a lion, but no lion, at least as far as she can see. Blasts from the battle up above the surface make the entire cavern shake, and she decides it’s probably a good idea to hurry up and get Chess some backup.

“Ok, I’m in a giant hole. Now what, Reese?” she wonders aloud.

The carvings under her feet light up, the yellow light far warmer and more welcoming than the purple light, and her gaze is led to a circular mark, almost like a target, on the wall. “So I have to get through that?”

When they found the blue lion, Chess’s presence made the floor break and brought them to the lion, so Reese tries pressing her hands against the carving. Nothing happens, and every moment that passes is another moment where Chess might be shot out of the sky, so Reese looks around for another idea. Behind her is a massive drill, the kind with a driver’s seat, and an idea starts to form in her head.

The drill cuts through the rock like butter, and Reese hops out into another cavern. This one has a huge yellow sphere, and inside it is a yellow mechanical lion.

~

Chess doesn’t have the vocabulary to properly convey how absolutely fucked she is.

She’s totally surrounded, she still barely knows how to fly this lion and is relying on pure instinct, Reese is MIA, and Chess is fucked.

It feels like for every ship she takes down, there’s two more in its place, and she’s quickly getting overwhelmed. She ducks and almost slams into a canyon wall, then the lion’s jaws close around another battleship, and the tail slams into three more. She might be crying, she can’t tell, but if she is, she doesn’t have time to wipe tears from her face.

And then the ships focus their firepower on the cave.

“ _Reese_!” Chess yells, but saying her name won’t save her.

 _Fuck_.

~

“Okay, I know Annleigh said this is supposed to be my lion, but what if she’s wrong? I mean, she probably isn’t wrong, she’s a princess, but I’m not a pilot! I mean, I’ve always wanted to be a pilot. I read all the fighter manuals, but I never got to fly the simulator. But I can’t be much worse than Chess, right? She crashed all the time. But what if I get in there and it doesn’t respond? What if it’s too big and my feet don’t touch the pedals? _What if there aren’t even pedals_?”

Cairo is only half-listening to Evan’s rambling, her attention locked on the carvings on the rocks on either side of the river. The sloth thing gives her a questioning look and she shrugs.

“Evan, you’re rambling,” she interrupts. “Listen. Our commander on the Kerberos mission was the smartest woman I’ve ever met, and she always said ‘if you get too worried about what could go wrong, you might miss a chance to do something great.’”

Evan takes a shaky breath, like those words pierced him right in the heart, and then he smiles down at his hands.

Cairo really hopes Annleigh was right. She barely knows this kid - although there’s something familiar about him, even if she can’t quite put her finger on it - but she’s sure he’s capable. She just doesn’t know if he knows that.

“Oh my God,” he says softly, and Cairo looks up at an enormous jungle temple. The top is obscured by 10,000 years of roots, but there’s no mistaking the intricate lion carvings that light up as Evan approaches.

“I think we’re here,” Cairo says. “Go. Be great.”

Evan nods, squares his shoulders, and starts to climb the temple.

It’s a bit boring watching him climb, if Cairo is being honest. His progress isn’t very fast, and he’s not at risk of falling or anything. She leans against a boulder, studying the nails on her remaining arm, waiting for him to get to the damn lion. But eventually he reaches the top, and her attention is riveted once again.

He just stands there, staring into the tangle of huge roots, and Cairo wonders what he sees down there.

And then a burst of green light floods from the cracks, illuminating him, and his jacket and hair flow in the light breeze, and as he jumps in, whooping, Cairo thinks that he looks like he’s ready to defend the damn universe.

The roots explode in a burst of brilliant green light, and the green lion roars, and anticipation pools in Cairo’s stomach for when it’s her turn.

~

*****

Reese can’t be dead.

She can’t be.

Chess is still dodging battleships while her lion scans frantically for the yellow one, every moment of radio silence from Reese making her want to cry. There are battleships on every side, and she’s getting overwhelmed, and panic crawls up her throat, and she’s definitely crying right now and might be having the early stages of a panic attack.

“Reese!” she yells desperately, her voice breaking. “Reese, c’mon, please! Help me!”

A shot hits her lion from below, and she starts to fall out of the sky, and she’s shaking and she’s panicking and _help help help-_

*****

The lion hits the ground with a thud she feels in her bones, and it’s a miracle she’s not losing her shit right now.

“Reese,” she cries softly as alarms blare

In front of her, three battleships form a triangle formation and start to aim at her, and Chess prepares for a fiery death, light-years from Earth, from her family.

And then there’s something in front of her, blocking the shots and giving her time to regroup.

“Reese,” she cries as she recogizes her savior as the yellow lion. “You’re not dead!”

“You good?” Reese’s voice asks over the speakers. Her lion literally belly-flops on top of the galra ships, instantly destroying them.

“You-you jumped in front of those shots to save my life!”

“Actually, I was trying to get out of the way,” Reese admits. “But what this thing lacks in speed, it more than makes up for in armor. Man, it can take a beating.” Noises behind her get her attention. “Uh, we’ve got company!”

Chess checks the timer on one of her screens. “The wormhole is only gonna be open for a few more minutes. We’d better scram.”

The two of them head for the wormhole, and as they pass through, Chess is hit with a rush of adrenaline so strong she nearly giggles.

_Defenders of the Universe._

_I like it._

~

When Chess and Reese walk back into the control room of the Castle, sore from their battle, Evan and Cairo are already back.

“You made it!” Annleigh says.

“Just barely. That was a nightmare,” Chess groans. “I almost puked. I felt like Reese!”

“Think about how I felt,” Reese snaps. “I am Reese!”

Evan and Cairo look at each other, and Reese doesn’t like the secretive smile they share. “Yeah, we had a tough time too,” Evan says, and Reese can tell he’s lying, but it’s not worth arguing.

Cairo looks at Kate. “Any news on the red lion?”

“Annleigh just located it.” Farrah steps forward. “There’s good news and bad news. The good news is, the red lion is nearby! Buuuuut, it’s on the galra cruiser that’s now orbiting Arus. Wait, but good news again! _We’re_ Arus!”

Reese forgets to breathe.

“They’re here already?” Cairo demands.

“Yes. My calculations must have been a bit off.” Farrah smiles, not showing a hint of shame. “Finger counting is more of an art than a science.”

The screen lights up, and the purple alien face that projects onto the window makes Reese’s heart skip a few beats. “Princess Annleigh. This is Commander Sendak of the Galra Empire. I come on behalf of Emperor Zarkon, Lord of the Known Universe. I am here to confiscate the lions. Turn them over to me, or I will destroy your planet.” The face on screen disappears, and the haphazard group of seven is left staring at where it was.

“Ok, let’s not panic,” Cairo says, breaking the silence.

“Not panic?” Reese demands. “That scary purple alien is driving his battleship towards us, with the intent to blow us all up. Explain to me how we’re supposed to _not panic_. We only have four lions!”

“Technically only three working lions,” Evan muses.

“Yes, thank you, Evan.” Reese points to him to emphasize her point. “Three working lions and a castle that’s, like, 10,000 years old.”

“10,600 years old,” Farrah corrects. “You see, it was built by my grandfather-”

“Thank you, Farrah.” Reese throws her hands in the air. “See? Now is the _perfect_ time to panic!”

“The Castle has a particle barrier we can activate,” Annleigh says.

“What’s a particle barrier?” Chess asks.

“It’s like a force field. Like what was shielding your lion when we found it,” Kate explains.

“Oh, shut up, know-it-all.”

“You asked!”

“Girls,” Cairo says in a warning tone.

“The particle barrier won’t hold Sendak’s ion cannon forever,” Farrah worries as the screen shows a diagram of the cruiser. “The galra technology must have advanced since we last fought them. I mean, it has been 10,000 years.”

“So… panic?” Reese asks.

“No.” Cairo holds up a hand. “We just need to figure out a plan of action, and quickly.”

“I say we pop through a wormhole and live to fight another day,” Chess says.

“I second that!” Reese adds. “I mean, we tried to find all the lions, right? We gave it our best shot, couldn’t do it, and so we can’t form Voltron.” She thinks for a minute. “I mean, we could form a snake. Or a worm! For your wormhole idea!”

“We can’t abandon Arus,” Evan argues. “The galra will keep destroying planets and taking prisoners until we stop them.”

“Well, if we run, maybe Sendak will follow us and leave this planet alone, like when we left Earth!” Reese says optimistically.

“Sendak could just destroy the planet and come after us anyways,” Kate snaps. “Staying is our only option.”

“Here’s an option - shut your quiznak,” Chess tells her.

Kate crosses her arms. “I don’t think you’re using that word correctly.”

“What do you know, Ponytail?”

“We’re staying!”

“Leaving!”

“Staying!” Evan agrees.

“Snake!” Reese reminds them.

“Stop it!” Cairo shouts. “Princess, these are your lions. You’ve dealt with the Galra Empire before. You know what we’re facing better than any of us. What do you think is the best course of action?”

Annleigh looks like she might crumple at any moment. “I-I don’t know.”

“Maybe your father can help,” Farrah says gently.

~

As the door slides open, and Annleigh walks into the room, she doesn’t know what to think. “Farrah? What’s going on?”

“King Alfor knew there was a good chance that he might never see you again. So he stored his memories, his very being, in this computer for you.”

Annleigh steps forward, and the simulation roars to life. The dark computer room is transformed into a field of flowers with mountains in the distance, just like from her childhood on a peaceful Altea, and Farrah is gone. And when she turns around, a hologram of her father is standing before her.

“Father,” she breathes. “Father! It’s so good to see you!” She runs towards him, but of course can’t hug him - he’s just a hologram.

“Annleigh, my only child. Oh, how I’ve missed your face,” he says.

Her smile fades as she remembers the situation at hand. “I’m so frightened. A galra cruiser is approaching, and I don’t know if we should stay and fight, or run and preserve what we have. Please help me.”

“I would do anything to take this burden from you,” her father says gently.

“I want to fight, but the paladins of old are gone,” she laments.

“I scattered the Lions of Voltron to keep them out of Zarkon’s hands. You urged me to keep them and fight, but I didn’t listen. I chose to hide them for the good of the universe. You mustn't do what I did. You were right. I made a terrible mistake, and cost the universe countless lives. Forming Voltron is the _only_ way to stop Zarkon. You must be willing to sacrifice everything to assemble the lions and correct my error.”

~

When the doors open, Cairo’s eyes are immediately drawn to the movement. Annleigh steps into the room, and she’s changed out of her dress and into a sleek, tight battle outfit, her hair tied up in a bun.

“You five paladins were brought here for a reason,” she says. “The Voltron Lions are meant to be piloted by you, and you alone. We must fight, and keep fighting, until we defeat Zarkon. Voltron is the universe’s only hope. _We_ are the universe’s only hope.”

“We’re with you, Princess,” Cairo says.

Annleigh brings them down to a room several floors below. Five pods hold five sets of sleek white armor with black bodysuits underneath. The helmets, shoulders, wrists, elbows, and knees of each set of armor are a different color on each set - blue, red, black, green, and yellow. Each suit also has a pattern on the chest - a downwards arrow with a chunk cut out of the inside of the bend. Cairo has seen it in the lions - it’s the symbol of Voltron.

“Your suits of armor,” Annleigh says, but all five of them have clearly figured that out.

Once they’re all in their armor, Annleigh brings them to a table. There’s only four shapes on here - each looks like two white brackets with a bar in the middle like a handle, with colors on the sides - red, green, yellow, and blue. No black.

“The bayard is the traditional weapon of the paladin,” Annleigh says as Evan, Kate, Chess, and Reese each take theirs. “It takes a distinct shape for each paladin.”

As Cairo watches, Reese’s becomes some sort of small cannon, Kate’s a sword (and a shield pops out of the plating on her arm), Chess’s a blaster, and Evan’s a grappling hook with a sharp blade at the end.

“Aww, you got a cute little bayard,” Chess teases.

Evan slams the flat side of it against her armor, and apparently it shocks her as she jumps back, yelping.

“Yeah,” he says with a smirk. “It is pretty cute.”

Annleigh turns to Cairo. “I’m afraid your bayard was lost with its paladin.”

Cairo manages a smile. “Then I guess I’ll just have to make do.”

Back in the control room, Annleigh pulls up the diagram of Sendak’s ship. “You’ll need to retrieve the red lion,” she says.

Kate chews on her lip. “That, uh, that’s a pretty big ship. How are we supposed to find the red lion?”

“It’s not a matter of ‘we’,” Evan tells her. “It’s a matter of you. You’ll be able to sense it when you’re close enough, and track it down.”

“Yeah, you know how you felt that crazy energy in the desert?” Chess adds.

“You made fun of me for that,” Kate reminds her flatly.

“And I’m proud of that. But it’s actually exactly like that mumbo-jumbo.”

“Kate, remember, the red lion is extremely temperamental,” Annleigh says. “You’ll have to earn its respect.”

Cairo can tell the pressure is starting to weigh on Kate, and she puts a hand on her shoulder, hoping to be comforting.

“Here’s our plan,” she says. “Sendak doesn’t know we have the green lion, so Evan will sneak me and Kate onto the ship while Reese and Chess pretend to surrender their lions. Evan, Kate, and I will find the red lion, Reese and Chess will find a way to take down the ion cannon, and then we’ll reconvene back on Arus to get the black lion. And then we form Voltron.”

The rest of the team nods.

“We only get one shot,” Cairo says. “So let’s make it count.”


	4. The Rise of Voltron - Part 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok so as I got through the episode, I realized it was a galra battleship and not a cruiser, but didn't feel like changing it so here

Cairo’s plan isn’t going too badly.

Chess and Reese are silent as they approach the galra cruiser, too afraid to speak. Chess has a map on one of her screens, and she can see little icons for her, the yellow lion, the green lion, the Castle, and the cruiser. She watches Evan’s progress on her map out of the corner of her eye, nerves twisting in her stomach. What if the galra catch them?

Chess takes a deep breath as her lion picks up on the galra radio feed. She turns on her mic, trying to keep her voice from shaking. “Attention, galra ship. Do not fire. We’re surrendering our lions.” The second she’s done speaking, she turns the mic back off.

“Chess?” Reese’s voice comes over her intercom.

“Yeah?”

“Nothing. I just…” Reese trails off. “Felt, like, really alone for a second. Needed to know I’m not doing this by myself.”

“I trust Cairo. This will work out.” Chess tries to make herself believe what she’s saying as they approach the ship.

~

Okay, yes, Kate is terrified.

She’s notoriously bad at opening up - how is she supposed to forge a mystical bond with a mechanical lion while galra soldiers might actively be hunting her? And Annleigh’s talk about how the red lion is difficult to connect with isn’t helping. Kate’s doubts are overwhelming her, making her second guess everything she’s doing.

Evan’s bayard easily cuts a hole in the side of the ship for the three of them to get inside, and Kate goes last, into some sort of vent. The three of them make it through a door into a hallway, and the lower halves of their helmets disappear so they can breathe the air on the ship and preserve the air in their suits.

“We’re in,” Evan radios to the others.

The three of them walk down the halls, trying to find somewhere Evan can hide to watch their exit, and the longer Kate goes without sensing the red lion, the worse she feels. What if she wasn’t the right choice and they’re all doomed?

Kate realizes Cairo isn’t with her anymore and turns around. She’s standing stone-still in the middle of the hall, eyes wide.

“Cai?” Kate asks softly.

Cairo seems to snap back to reality. “I’ve been here before. This is the ship I was held prisoner on.”

“Are you sure?” Evan asks.

“Absolutely.”

“So… so your other crew members, they might be held captive here,” Evan says slowly. “We have to rescue them!”

“We don’t have time. We have to get the red lion and get back to Arus,” Cairo says, and starts to keep moving down the hall.

“We can’t just leave prisoners here!”

“No one understands that more than me, but we don’t have a choice.”

“No!”

Kate automatically looks up and down the hall, hoping Evan’s shout didn’t draw any attention.

“Commander Sanchez is my mother,” Evan continues, softer. “She and my sister were the ones on the Kerberos mission with you.”

“Commander Sanchez is your mother?” Cairo repeats.

 _Oh_. Kate knows suddenly why Evan is so familiar - they knew each other before the Kerberos mission.

“Yes!” Evan takes a deep breath. “I have been searching _everywhere_ for her and my sister. I-I changed my name, pretended I was a boy named Evan Gunderson to get into the Garrison, because they kicked me out after I wouldn’t let them give up looking for you. I knew you before, remember? Eva Sanchez?”

“Oh my God,” Kate says under her breath. Evan- _Eva_ glares at the both of them, gripping her bayard.

“I’m not giving up looking when I’m this close,” Eva snaps. “I won’t!”

“I’m coming with you,” Cairo says.

“What?” Kate demands.

Cairo turns to her. “Me and Eva are going to go look for the prisoners. I think I might remember where they’re held. You need to go find the red lion, okay?”

“Wha- by myself?” Kate can’t cry, she won’t. “Cai, no!”

“You can do this! I know you can.” Cairo puts a hand on her shoulder. “It’s just a minor change of plans, okay? You’re the only one who can find the red lion, anyways. You never needed my help. Remember: patience yields focus.”

Kate heard her say that a million times before the Kerberos mission, to the point where it almost lost its meaning, but now she’s hearing it for the first time in over a year and it finally means something again.

The doors down the hall open before Cairo can say anything else, and they split up down the other two hallways, Kate going one way and Eva and Cairo going the other.

As she runs, Kate thinks it might be a good thing that Eva just told her and Cairo the truth. Now she’s too busy thinking about that bombshell to worry about whether she’ll be able to bond with the red lion.

She remembers Eva. Before the Kerberos mission, the two families of the crew members met several times. Cairo brought Kate with her once or twice, because of how close they were, and Kate remembers meeting the Sanchez family.

It was about eight weeks before the scheduled launch date for the Kerberos mission. Commander Sanchez had invited Cairo over for dinner, and she’d asked to bring Kate. Since they weren’t actually related, Kate hadn’t been invited to any Garrison events, but Cairo had told the Sanchezes “she’s like my little sister,” and that had been enough reason for Kate to get to meet Cairo’s crewmates.

“Cai, do I have to?” Kate remembered asking. 

Cairo rang the doorbell. “Yes, you do. It’s important for crewmates’ families to know each other-”

“And we’re chosen family, yeah, I know.” Kate sighed, then put on a smile when Cairo nudged her as the door opened.

“Cairo, hello! Come on in. And you must be Kate! I’m Julian,” said the man who’d answered the door. “Isabella, Elena! They’re here.”

As they stepped into the front hall, Kate heard footsteps on the stairs, and a girl her age quickly came into view. “Cairo!” said the girl.

“Hey, Eva,” Cairo said, giving her a quick hug. “This is Kate. Kate, Eva is Elena’s sister.”

Eva held out a hand, and Kate nervously shook it. “Hey, it’s nice to meet you,” Eva said warmly.

“Uh, you too.” Kate’s eyes fell on a pin on Eva’s denim jacket - a little rainbow heart. “I-I like your pin.”

“Thanks!”

Then Elena and Isabella came to greet them, and Kate was swept into the dining room without a chance to say anything else. She’d spent the entire dinner sneaking glances at Eva, and had a hard time forming complete sentences every time they were in the same room all the way up until launch day.

With a start, Kate remembers the photo from Eva’s bag that Reese had shown them back on Earth, in Kate’s shack. She hadn’t gotten a good look at it then, but now Kate realizes why it was so familiar - the picture was of Eva and Elena on launch day, and Kate was the one who took it.

She stops thinking about Eva when she hears footsteps down another hall, and she starts trying to sense the red lion again, but there’s a fluttering in her stomach that definitely wasn’t there before.

She comes to a stop at a fork in the hallways, a hall on her left and one on her right. In between them is a symbol that Kate assumes is Sendak’s.

_Now which way?_

She hears footsteps approaching on her left, and so picks right, taking off as fast as she dares. She still can’t sense the red lion - all she can do is hope she’s heading in the right direction.

~

The doors that Chess and Reese are approaching start to open.

“Uh, Chess, what is that?” Reese asks nervously as a purple ball of light begins to gather in the center of the now-open doorway.

“Fuck, I think it’s a tractor beam,” says Chess’s voice. “That would be our cue to get out of here!”

The yellow and blue lions duck out of the way just as the tractor beam blares out of the ship. A moment later, and it would’ve caught them. Sendak definitely knows he’s been tricked now, and Reese tries not to think about what that means.

The ship starts to release battleships, and it’s all Reese and Chess can do to stay focused on the task at hand.

“Reese, you go after the ion cannon,” Chess calls over the speaker. “I’m gonna take these assholes for a space ride!”

“Please don’t die,” Reese begs as she heads for the ion cannon.

“Relax! I’m the Tailor, remember?”

“Last time you said that, you crashed the simulator!”

“Details, details.”

Reese decides to have this argument later and focuses her attention on the ion cannon. It’s huge, and intimidating, and she has no problem believing that it’s capable of destroying Arus. She tries to slam into it to try to dent it, but hits something different. For just a second, as the force from the impact knocks her back, she sees something purple shimmer around the ion cannon - a particle barrier.

“Well, quiznak,” she mumbles to herself. “Annleigh, there’s a force field!”

~

Annleigh is a little too busy to worry about Reese having to get through a force field to get to the ion cannon.

“Particle barrier up,” she says, and she and Farrah watch through the window as the pale blue particle barrier comes to life. But then it flickers, then disappears, and Annleigh starts to panic.

Farrah looks at her. “Uh, is that what’s supposed to happen?”

Annleigh huffs and runs to the box that holds the generator for the particle barrier, opening the little hatch that lets her see inside. She and Farrah both look in, trying to see the problem through the tiny hole.

“Oh, quiznak!” Farrah curses. “All the barrier crystals are out of alignment!”

“We have to fix it immediately.” Annleigh glances back, out the window and up at where she knows the galra ship is. “Without the particle barrier, we’ll be defenseless!”

“We’re both far too big!”

A squeaking sound behind them catches Annleigh’s attention, and the mice she’d found in her sleeping pod run up and into the the generator. As Annleigh and Farrah watch, the mice push each crystal back into place.

“How do they know how to do this?” Farrah wonders.

Annleigh gasps. “I can hear them talking to me! Our minds must be connected after sharing a sleeping pod for 10,000 years!”

The mice run out, and Annleigh rushes to the main controls. “Particle barrier up,” she says, and this time, it stays up.

Farrah starts staring at the mice, pressing her fingers to her temples, and after a silent moment, Annleigh rolls her eyes. “Farrah, what are you doing?”

“Trying to get them to make me a sandwich!”

~

Kate doesn’t know how long she’s been running.

She tears down hallway after hallway, and her frustration wells as every single one continues to look exactly the same. She’s so lost that in an emergency, there’s no way she’d be able to get back to the green lion.

When she comes to a fork in the halls, she lets out a little yell of frustration - it looks exactly like the one she’s seen three times already. Maybe it is the same one, and she’s just been running in circles.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” she growls to herself. She pauses to catch her breath, and takes the moment to try to reach the lion _again_. But she still can’t fucking sense the stupid thing.

Cairo’s words ring in her mind - _patience yields focus._

Kate tries to calm her breathing, to block out everything - wondering if Reese and Chess have gotten rid of the ion cannon, wondering if Cairo is okay, thinking about Eva - and focuses all of her energy on the red lion.

She hears a metallic growl in her mind, and suddenly it’s like there’s a tug in her gut, pulling her to the left.

Kate opens her eyes and grins. “Gotcha.”

~

 _Stellar job, Eva Sanchez, you fucking idiot_.

Eva hadn’t ever intended for anyone to find out she wasn’t Evan Gunderson. It had been close when she’d met Kate and Cairo, afraid they’d recognize her, but neither of them seemed to connect her with the girl they’d met before the Kerberos mission, and apparently she was in the clear.

Being alone with Cairo on the jungle planet where they’d found the green lion had been nerve wracking. The entire time, Eva had been scared Cairo was going to confront her, but she never had.

But Eva had just told Kate and Cairo who she really was, and she didn’t know how to feel about that.

It felt dangerous, in a way. She’d been Evan Gunderson for literally an entire year, and being Eva Sanchez had started to feel instinctually bad, because she knew that if the Garrison knew who she really was, she’d be kicked out and would never find her family. But it also felt freeing - finally, there was someone who might be able to _see her._

And it feels significant that she told specifically Cairo and Kate who she was. She remembers them from before - remembers how she’d looked up to Cairo, but had simultaneously wished she could take her place and go on the mission with her mother and sister. And she remembers how her eyes had been drawn to Kate every time they were in the same room together, how they’d occasionally whisper to each other while the adults talked.

She tries not to think too hard about what she just did as she and Cairo sprint down the hall. Cairo swears she knows where they’re going, and Eva really hopes she’s right - if they get caught because of this, Annleigh is going to kill them both.

As the hallways apruptly splits in two directions at a sharp angle, they stop for a moment while Cairo tries to remember which way to go. Eva’s stomach sinks when a small, shoebox-sized, pyramid-shaped drone floats down the hallway towards them, but just as it sees them, Eva thinks fast and hits it with her bayard. It hits the ground with a clang that makes them both jump.

“That thing saw us,” Cairo says. “We should get out of here.”

“Wait, I have an idea.” Eva bends down next to it and finds the spot where it opens, reconnecting a few cords based on a diagram she pulls up on the visor of her helmet. She quickly fixes what she did to it, glad that there was minimal damage, and then resets the controls. It whirs to life, and she smiles, satisfied, when no alarms blare. “And now it’s working for us! I’m gonna call you Rover. Follow me!”

She and Cairo head down the hallway, Rover following close behind.

They come to a door in one hallway, and Cairo presses a hand against it. “This is it, this is where they kept me and your family.”

There’s no guards, but Eva quickly realizes that that’s because the only way to open it is a sensor to the side of the door. Luckily, Rover can open it for them.

The doors slide open, and Eva tries to see into the darkness, hoping beyond hope that Elena and her mother are in there.

“Mom? Elena?” she calls, stepping into the room. There’s no answer from them, but the room isn’t empty - there’s an entire ragtag group of aliens in there. Some are humanoid, some have extra limbs, some tower over her, some could fit in the palm of her hand. It really hits her then - the entire _universe_ is full of countless alien civilizations.

Still, her spirits sink as she realizes that her family isn’t here. Yet another dead end.

“Don’t be afraid,” Cairo says, putting on her “leader voice”. “We’re here to help you escape.”

“It’s you. It’s you - the Champion!” one of the aliens says as they see Cairo. “If anyone can get us out of here, she can!” they say to their companions.

“What did you call me?” Cairo asks softly.

Eva grits her teeth. “We don’t have much time. Let’s get to the escape pods.”

~

Chess is actually starting to enjoy this battle.

She was expecting it, she has more room to maneuver, she’s starting to really understand this lion, and she’s not worrying about Reese in a cave down below. Her lion takes out fighters like it’s nothing, and she pauses to do a quick loop-de-loop, whooping.

“Chess, I can’t get to the ion cannon,” Reese calls desperately.

“Uh, I dunno! Just keep hitting it, I guess?”

“I’m gonna give this lion a concussion,” Reese mutters, but keeps hitting it.

~

Kate ducks into a sideroom, and the pull in her stomach fades as she takes in the sight of the red lion.

It’s being held in the air, the bottom of the particle barrier protecting it about a meter off the ground. Kate walks up to it, sheathing her bayard, and presses one hand against it.

Nothing happens.

“Let’s get out of here, open up,” she orders.

Still nothing. Dread starts to claw up her throat, but she ignores it.

“It’s me! Kate? Your buddy?” Her voice starts to go up in pitch, but she’s trying not to panic. “I- we’re connected, right? I could sense you!”

There’s still nothing from the lion. The eyes don’t even light up.

“It’s me! Kate! I’m- I’m your paladin!” Fuck, this is humiliating. Maybe it’s a good thing Eva and Cairo went a different way.

The silence is broken by shots from behind her, and Kate automatically activates her shield, ducking behind it as she takes in the sight of three androids behind her, firing at her. Her shield takes shot after shot as she looks back up at the lion. “I’m bonding with you! C’mon! We’re on a time crunch, let’s _go_! We’re _fucking connected_ , you asshole!”

Nothing happens, and the androids start getting closer, so Kate calls up her bayard and goes after the immediate threat. “You’re not getting this lion,” she shouts as the bayard turns into her sword. She shoves one android out of the way with her shield, and her sword cuts through the legs of another like it’s nothing, but she can hear more approaching. She’s totally fucked.

She’s almost out of ideas when she realizes that the floor has a huge line down the center. She’s standing on a giant set of doors, and she’d bet anything they lead outside.

The lower portion of her helmet flashes into existence, and Kate runs for the console, slapping a hand against the button that opens them to suck the androids out into space. But she remembers just a moment too late that she’s not secured, either, and now she’s clinging to the console, trying to resist following the androids.

“Help me!” she screams at the lion. It doesn’t acknowledge her, even as she’s about to die.

Something hits her, and she loses her grip on the console. Screaming, she’s sucked out into the expanse of space, drifting without an anchor. The green lion is gone, and she can see the yellow and blue ones locked in battle, with nobody to help her. She’s just starting to accept that she’s going to die when she sees her lion.

It must have come to life when she got dragged out of the ship, and now the jaws open and scoop her up. She makes it into the cockpit with a grin, taking a seat in the pilot’s chair that already feels familiar.

“Let’s roll.”

Her words are met with a deep, mechanical purr, and she grins as the lion makes a huge arc up around the ship, to the battle.

~

Cairo leads them to the deck where the escape pods are, trying and failing to do a head count.

“Come on, let’s go,” Eva snaps. Cairo can’t blame her for being frustrated - she can’t imagine what the poor girl has been through in the search for her family.

“Halt,” says a voice behind them, and Cairo whips around to see a group of androids holding blasters run into the room, perfectly in sync.

Eva brandishes her bayard, but Cairo is totally unarmed. She’s looking around for something she can use as a weapon when her galra hand begins to glow purple.

It hurts, so bad, and as she falls to the ground, clutching her arm, Eva’s voice sounds like she’s underwater. But then the pain fades, and Cairo gets back to her feet, her arm glowing white hot. As she charges the androids, Cairo finds that it makes an amazing weapon - it’s strong, and hot, and it takes out every android it comes in contact with. Eva doesn’t have to do a thing.

“Well, that was pretty badass,” Eva says softly.

“Thank you, Cairo,” one of the aliens says, and then the pod closes and is launched into space. Eva already entered the coordinates for Arus.

“Wait!” Cairo calls, but it’s gone.

Eva nudges her. “Cairo, that was incredible! Where’d you learn to fight like that?”

“I-I don’t know.” Cairo studies her hand, which has gone back to normal. She knows she’s missing something, but she can’t figure out what.

~

It takes three blasts from the yellow lion before the particle barrier around the ion cannon falls.

Reese tries not to think about how powerful this ion cannon must be - at least three times as powerful as a lion blast - as she takes the opportunity to slam against it. The yellow lion has more plating than the others, and she barely even feels the impact that’s strong enough to put a significant dent in the side, enough to take it out of commission.

“Reese: 1, ion cannon: 0,” she gloats, choosing to ignore how long it took to get through the particle barrier.

She catches sight of the green lion, and then the red lion, too. “You guys made it!” she calls.

Evan’s voice comes over the intercom. “Kitty rose has left the station!”

“That makes absolutely no sense,” says Kate’s voice.

“Okay, you know what-”

“Kate, stop it,” says Cairo’s voice from Evan’s lion. “Back to Arus, guys, come on.”

“I hope I took out the ion cannon,” Reese worries. “I could barely make a dent in it!”

“Trust me, dude, that’s pretty destroyed,” Chess assures her as the group flies back to Arus.

~

Cairo closes her eyes.

Annleigh was positive that the lion was behind this huge set of doors, with the symbol of Voltron on them. Behind Cairo are the other four lions, arranged in position around the courtyard. The other paladins aren’t in them, though - they’re in the hallway around the corner, with Annleigh and Farrah. Cairo has to do this on her own.

One by one, the lions light up, the eyes glowing yellow and the teal lights across them coming softly to life. The doors slide open, and _there’s_ the connection Cairo had been waiting for.

She feels the lion before she sees it - a presence in her head, not quite a voice, but there all the same. And when she does see it, it takes her breath away.

It’s bigger than any of the other lions, with red wing-like shapes on its back, and the Voltron symbol on its chest. Its eyes glow yellow, and it rears its head and roars, but Cairo isn’t afraid in the least, not even as the other four lions roar back.

Maybe she really was meant for this.

The other paladins come running around the corner, whooping. Chess, Eva, and Reese go straight to their lions, but Kate stops to hug Cairo before the two of them split ways and run to their respective lions. Cairo feels at home in the pilot’s chair, more than she’s ever felt, but just as she’s getting a feel for it, the Castle alarms start to go off.

“They’ve gotten their ion cannon back online!” yells Farrah’s voice. “And they’re coming through the Arusian atmosphere!”

“I don’t understand!” Chess says. “You saw what Reese did to that thing!”

“Yeah, well, the galra are efficient,” Eva snaps. “And now we get to deal with it.”

“We need Voltron _now_!” Annleigh orders.

Cairo takes a deep breath, then steers her lion out of the courtyard and up into the sky. “C’mon, guys, we got this!” The others follow her, and they all land in front of the Castle like guards.

“So… what now?” Kate asks. The particle barrier is holding off the fighters, but Cairo knows it might not hold against the ion cannon, especially not from this close. Her stomach sinks when she sees it start to power up.

The blast hits the particle barrier and almost seems to set it on fire. Cairo yells, and hears the other paladins do the same as they fight to stay on their feet. The golden light is so bright it hurts her eyes, but when it fades, the particle barrier has yet to fall.

“We might not be able to take many more hits like that,” Farrah warns. “And once the shield comes down, the Castle will be defenseless.”

“I can give you cover with the Castle defenses for awhile, but you have to form Voltron now, or else we will all be destroyed!” Annleigh adds.

“No pressure,” Reese mutters.

“Listen up, Team Voltron,” Cairo shouts. “The only way we succeed is to give it all you’ve got! I know this looks bad, but we can do this! Are you with me?”

There’s silence, but Cairo takes it as a yes.

“I’m nodding,” Reese says. “Just- just checking that you guys are, too.”

“Yes, we are,” Kate growls.

“Okay, then let’s do this!” Cairo sends her lion forwards.

“Uh, how?” Chess asks. “‘Cause I don’t have, like, a ‘form Voltron’ button on my dash or anything.”

“Anyone have any ideas?” Cairo asks.

Eva’s lion pounces on a pair of battleships. “Holy shit, this is insane! Is it seriously too much to ask for them to cease fire for _one minute_ so we can figure this out?”

“Do you even hear yourself?” Kate snaps.

“That- I didn’t mean that literally!”

“Arguing won’t help,” Cairo reminds them. Eva’s right, though - they’re all too busy fending off battleships to focus on this.

“We’ve got to do something,” Kate says, then yells as Reese slams into her.

“Combine!” Reese shouts.

“Reese, what the actual fuck?!?” Kate rolls a few times, then digs her lion’s claws into the ground to stop.

“Okay, that didn’t work.”

“We’re running out of power! Hurry up, paladins!” Annleigh calls.

“Maybe if we fly in formation, we’ll just… combine!” Cairo suggests. “Take off on my cue! One, two, three, Voltron!”

“Nothing’s happening,” Kate snaps.

“Wait, no, I feel something!” Chess says excitedly.

“Me, too!” Reese agrees. “Almost like we’re all being pulled in the same direction!”

“Well, that’s probably because of the _tractor beam carrying us up to the ship!_ ” Eva shouts.

“Oh, come _on_ ,” Chess complains.

One last ion beam hits the Castle, and Cairo’s stomach sinks as she sees the particle barrier blink once, twice, and then fall completely.

“I don’t care what you say, Cairo, I’m panicking now!” Reese screams.

“No, it can’t end here,” Eva says desperately.

“This is it,” Chess shouts.

“It’s been an honor flying with you all,” Kate says.

“No,” Cairo tells them. “We’re _not_ giving up. We can’t. It’s not over yet. We’re the universe’s only hope, we can’t abandon them. We can’t fail. We _won’t_ fail.”

All five lions rear their heads and roar, and just barely make it out of the tractor beam. There’s a burst of light, and when it fades, something feels different. With a start, Cairo realizes she’s sitting in the head of Voltron. One look at a diagram to her left tells her that Eva and Kate are the arms, and Chess and Reese are the legs.

“I can’t believe it,” Kate breathes.

“We formed Voltron!” Eva cheers.

“I’m a leg!” Reese marvels.

“How are we doing this?” Chess asks.

“I don’t know, but let’s get that cannon,” Cairo shouts. She seems to have total control over Voltron, so she makes it grab the cannon with Eva and Kate’s lions and rips it fully off the ship, tossing it over the hills with unbelievable strength. Kate gets slammed into the ship, causing a massive explosion, and Cairo prays that the others all are wearing seatbelts or something.

Voltron kicks a massive hole in the side of the ship, and Eva’s lion blasts its way through, decimating corridor after corridor. Voltron makes a huge arc around the ship, gaining momentum, and all five of them yell as they blast through the entire ship one last time. It sparks and explodes, shoving them forward, and Cairo laughs breathlessly as Voltron soars away, landing in front of the Castle.

~

Eva collapses onto the ground as soon as they’ve reached the main courtyard, absolutely drained from the battle, but a laugh escapes her lips as she realizes what they just did.

“Good work, paladins,” Annleigh praises as she and Farrah run to meet them.

“We did it,” Cairo says, taking off her helmet.

Kate lightly punches her shoulder. “Fuck yeah, we did.”

“How did we do it?” Cairo wonders.

Reese sits down next to Eva. “I was just, like, screaming the whole time. Maybe that did it.”

Eva gets to her feet, putting her glasses on, and her stomach sinks as she remembers what they didn’t do.

Cairo puts a hand on her shoulder. “I promise, we won’t stop searching until we find your sister and mother. Wherever they are, I’m sure they’d be proud of you.”

Eva manages to smile at her. “Thank you.”

“We won the battle, but the war has only just begun,” Annleigh says. “Zarkon won’t stop until he gets these lions.”

“Good thing you paladins know what you’re doing!” Farrah says cheerfully. “Because you’re gonna have to form Voltron again and again.”

Reese’s eyes widen. “What?”

“We barely survived forming Voltron this one time,” Chess points out.

Farrah laughs. “And you only had to fight one ship! Wait until you have to fight a whole fleet of them! It won’t be easy, being the Defenders of the Universe.”

Eva remembers to breathe.

“Defenders of the Universe, huh?” Cairo says. “That’s got a nice ring to it.”

Eva looks around the courtyard at her new team. She and Kate make eye contact for a moment, and grin at each other. She looks at Chess, and Reese, and Annleigh, and Farrah, and especially Cairo, and thinks that with a team like this, she can handle being a Defender of the Universe.

The entire group looks up at their lions together, illuminated against the setting sun, and grin.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's it for this fic!! But I have something else planned - I plan to write a collection of one-shots with this au, because I'm attached to it!


End file.
